PLPT 496/892: Disease Dynamics & Evolution—A Peer Review of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio

This benchmark course portfolio was developed as a component of the University of Nebraska Peer Review of Teaching. The course selected for this portfolio was a new course developed and taught as an Independent Study PLPT 496/892. The working title for the course was Disease Dynamics and Evolution. This course was designed to cover core concepts of disease ecology and pathogen emergence/evolution. Concepts were organism-agnostic and important for understanding infectious diseases of humans, animals, and plants. The course format was lecture-based and inquiry driven, using primary literature as case studies. The goal of this course was to use interesting and intriguing case studies of infectious diseases to develop critical thinking as scientists. The course was designed to be appropriate for a wide variety of biology students, with interests in ecology, environmental biology, animal, plant, and human biology to microbiology, pre-vet and pre-med. A pre-requisite for undergraduates was BIOS 312 or permission of instructor. It is expected the course will be offered in the spring semester of even-numbered years